


Breathing Apparatus

by kespa



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Action, Android!Hux, Angst, Breathing Metaphors, Canon Compliant, Daddy Issues, Explosions, Frottage, Hate to Love, How did I forget Angst?, Kylo's PoV, M/M, One for the Trash Can, Patricide, Phasma's POV, Pre-Canon, Psuedo-Science, Relationship Councillor!Phasma, Robot Feels, Romance, Sexual Tension, Speeder Chase, bottom!Hux, creepy Snoke, dark themes, hux's pov, top!Kylo
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-05-27
Updated: 2016-10-04
Packaged: 2018-07-10 14:37:24
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 19,500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6989287
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kespa/pseuds/kespa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For a moment, Hux imagines it.</p><p>Grand Marshal : the power of the fleet at his command, the Supreme Leader satisfied at last.  Kylo, his to instruct.  And in exchange, every touch that a plasticine man can give to a feral man-child with strong limbs and searching lips and untold power, power the likes of which the Galaxy has never known.</p><p>Armitage Hux is an android, designed and replicated by his Master to unite the First Order and eradicate the last of the Resistance. Kylo Ren is nothing more than a phantom limb - a glitch that has forced its way onto Hux's ship, into his quarters, embedded itself into his coding. Yet Hux has never been more afraid of being taken apart.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Act I:I Escape From Bakura

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is a rewrite of a rewrite. It has been quite the learning process, that's for sure! I took two years off to finish my uni course, and with that coming to a close, I want to be able to mark this complete at last. 
> 
> Anyone kind enough to give this fic a try before: the first 6 chapters have been rewritten but they are more or less the same. From there I have reimagined the plot, though I'm sure you'll notice a lot has been carried over! This is absolutely the final story. Updates will hopefully be monthly / bimonthly at least. If I can write my dissertation in a month I can finish this before 2019 right?!
> 
> The prompt from the tfa_kink meme that inspired this fic: 
> 
> Hux is an android/clone taken in by Snoke, who killed his father, and is now leader of the First Order. Kylo doesn't know about Hux's true identity and falls in love with him.

—K—

 

 

Kylo feels the Force ignite his senses as he alights from the shuttle.  Years of meditation, gruelling training exercises and deep Space solo missions have ill-prepared him for a planet at war.

He senses the First Order base as a ruthless, orderly war-machine in constant motion, driven by hundreds of military minds.  Beyond the duracrete walls he can sense skirmishes waged in the distance like breaths against bare skin.  Each life, whether Resistance fighter or Stormtrooper, gives Kylo a light brush of satisfaction as it is taken.

The chaos is a welcome change, but it sits heavily on his mind, as if with every breath it draws nearer.

As the shuttle doors close, Kylo takes in the rigid procession convened to greet him - the rows of troopers standing to rigid attention, the petty officers with arms raised in salute, the General himself standing at the head of the column, flanked by his senior officers.

The knight sets his shoulders back and strides down the parade of uniformed bodies.  He answers to Snoke - a being (certainly more than human) who holds unimaginable power over the Galaxy.  He is not nervous.

And yet, there is something about the man before him, with his back too straight and his hair too perfectly parted, that he finds unsettling.  He should be agitated, nervous, sweaty, his heart-rate increased by the menacing glint from Kylo's mask.

General Hux is the picture of professional detachment.  In his pale gaze Kylo can see a glimmer of disdain.

“Lord Kylo Ren.”  His name sounds absurd in Hux's clipped accent.  Kylo's title is borne from fear, pronounced with dread, but on Hux's tongue it falls flat and limp - impotent.  

“General…”

So this is the man his Master has chosen?

Hux steps forward.  There is a smug up-lift to his mouth that makes Ren bare his teeth behind his mask.

“Hux.  Commander of the Finaliser and, for the time being, of Bakura Base.”  Molten disgust pours into Kylo's mind as the General introduces himself.  At first he assumes that the slick, unpleasant thoughts belong to Hux.  But the Force turns Kylo's eyes to the officers behind him.  “-Captain Phasma of the Finaliser, my second in command,” Hux continues, “and Colonel Kessen of Bakura Base.  Third in command.”

Phasma's mind is cool and almost inhumanly organised beneath her silver stormtrooper armour.  Kessen's mind slides through Kylo's mental plain, molten hot and uncomfortably close.

Kylo withdraws from the sensation and turns his attention to the General’s mind.  He realises that Hux’s thoughts are eerily quiet, as though muffled through transparisteel.  The knight can hear the feedback of every body in the hanger, but this man he cannot detect through the Force.  Kylo would have probed further, were there not another sensation distracting him.

As soon as he stepped from his spacecraft, Kylo had known something was wrong.  Now there is a pounding in his head - deep, bloody, as though something within him is contracting and releasing.  The pounding is getting louder.

“There is a disturbance in the Force.”  The line comes naturally to him, said in a thousand voices across time, by Sith and Jedi alike - rendered dark and threatening through his mask's voice-changer.  The General's back stiffens.  He has been interrupted.  He does not appear impressed.

Hux's lips thin into a sneer, and he looks Kylo up and down.  “What invaluable insight Ren.  Do get back to us when you have something more specific to offer.  In the meantime, do refrain from offering unsolicited advice.  Now, I must return to forward operations at once - our forward defences have been compromised by an advancing squadron of X-Wings, as I am sure you are aware.”

Hux turns on his heel - but reconsiders, and whirls back to Kylo, his eyes flat and reflective under the artificial lights.  “The Supreme Leader has informed me that you are here to carry out his will, Ren - and that you should be afforded every means to do so uninterrupted.  But mark my words _:_ You will not interfere with my command without the Supreme Leader's direct sanction.  You have no power here.”  He waves Kylo away dismissively.  “Your quarters have been assigned.  You had best go to them and avoid _getting in my way_.”

Finally the General turns again and marches away, followed by his officers.  The stormtroopers close rank behind them.  Kylo focusses his anger and moves towards the source of his unease.

His mind is on the opposite side of the base, even as he follows the procession towards forward operations.  There an intent that Kylo cannot place, a movement - perhaps a scuttling.  It is shifting behind the walls.  He is barely aware of the path they take to the easternmost section of the base.  Something itches against his skin.

The General pauses at the entrance to forward ops and waves dismissively.  “Colonel Kessen, you are relieved.”  He continues through to the command centre without glancing back.  

“General Hux.” a petty officer snaps to attention, and approaches Hux as he surveys the rows of monitors.  Kylo remains at the back of the room.  Through the foreword viewports there is sea and sky and open grass.  The battle in the distance is barely a smear of smoke on the horizon, mingling with the sunset.  

“Our shields are down to fifty-three percent.  We have sustained heavy damage to our main shield generator.  Several At-Ats have been abandoned due to heavy damage.  Our men will find better cover closer to the clearing - blue squadron is requesting a retreat to the South.”

Hux nods in acknowledgement.  Kylo stalks around the edge of the room to get a better view of his face, but it is no more expressive than his mind.  “Send-” Hux begins, before he is interrupted by the grey-haired Colonel:

“We must press our advantage in the South.  We cannot afford to concede any more of the forest to Resistance forces.  If we continue to cower in our-”

“Commander Kessen.”  Hux's face is impassive even in fury, but he has gone perfectly rigid.  His voice cuts through the Colonel's blustering like steel through skin.  “You have been dismissed.  Remove yourself from forward command before Captain Phasma is forced to assist you.  Your plans are, and ever will be, the workings of a subpar strategic mind, responsible for the vulnerability of one of our most important occupations in the sector.  Due to your incompetence, the Supreme Leader has appointed me to-”

“Bakura is my posting, General, and I have been commanding it longer than you have been tying your shoelaces,” Kessen rages, his voice becoming increasingly uncontrolled.

Kylo's attention is far away, tearing through the thoughts of First Order personnel more and more frantically.  There is something moving behind the walls, above their heads.  Kylo knows that he has missed something vital that his Master would have recognised immediately.  He has failed.

Meanwhile, Hux squares off against his inferior officer.  “Commanding is one term to use, Colonel, for your trail of incompetence.  Do you believe it a coincidence that the Resistance chose to focus their attack on Bakura?  Your ineptitude is well-known, and it offends me,” Hux hisses at the red-faced Kessen.

The Colonel is incapable of speech for several moments.  Kylo’s mind is still frantically searching.  He is close - winding through corridors, walking in the body of a radar technician, then marching past beneath a stormtrooper's helmet.  He can hear it.

There is a deep echo from beneath the base, and from above.

“I will not hear these insults from you, _boy_ \- kriff the Supreme Leader and the kriffing _abominations_ that kiss his heels-”  Phasma steps forward, reaching for her blaster.

Kylo reacts also, drawing his lightsaber to fend off an enemy that he knows he is already too late to stop.

A deep, distant boom rocks the base.  Dust spirals down from the ceiling.

Kylo sees, finally - he rounds the corner in the mind of a petty officer, takes in the bodies scattered in the maintenance shaft, gets shot by a worn blaster rifle-

“What was that?”  General Hux demands frantically.

“We've lost-”

Kylo is in motion seconds before the world shatters around him in a wave that brings the ceiling of forward operations crashing down.  Debris rains down on the knight's back as he throws himself out into the corridor.

 

 

—H—

 

 

—Going Backwards—

The boy born Armitage Hux, junior, was wearing an old Academy uniform, the day he died.

The First Order was borne from the death of the Empire, and into a scattering of planets along the edges of the Unknown Regions.  

Like choking vines growing over a crashed Star Destroyer, the officers moved deeper into unmapped Space, licking their wounds.  Clinging to the structures on which their lives were founded, the last surviving teachers of the Empire's illustrious Academy stripped the clothes off their dead students' backs, and thrust them on the young cadets, those who were too young to be sent to their deaths in the final, brutal battles against the New Republic.

He was in his last years as a cadet back then : still a child.  Hux remembers a sarcastic, vindictive boy rejected by his peers, scorned by his father, made cruel and fragile by his failures.  He was never called ‘Hux’, never acknowledged as his father's son : that was an accolade he could never earn.

Brendol Hux had a single purpose : to raise the First Order from the ashes of the Empire.  His son was clearly not up to the task.

At that time, the Order’s forces were meagre, and always on high-alert for X-Wing patrols.  The Galaxy was settling, and its newer, more benevolent overlords were turning their attention to the weeds that still clung to the Unknown Regions.  Their goal, as ever, was to wipe the last Imperial traces from the Galaxy.

Armitage had been trailing behind his classmates, unpopular and unsociable, unable to lead or to follow.  He had been sporting a brilliant black eye that he had failed to return in kind.

When the warning sirens had sounded, Armitage had panicked.  He had run after his classmates, everyone sprinting for the other end of the hall, for cover.  The flimsy walls around them had shuddered and cracked from the sound waves of the Rebellion ships as they thundered overhead.  Armitage had not been fast enough : a disappointment to the end.

The walls had come down on him.

It had been over slowly, Hux remembers distinctly.  Half-crushed by the weight of rubble, but still just alive in a pocket of air, Armitage shuddered and cried for help.  He slipped in and out of consciousness, and when he was awake he whimpered, broken and distraught, calling out for his father.

He had bled out almost as slowly as he had suffocated.  His mind had slowed and shut down in the darkness and the dust.  Finally, when he had no more breath with which to scream, his body had been pulled free from the rubble.

Hux has no memory of the rest : for all intents and purposes he was already gone.  He learned later that the Commandant had demanded his son be put under stasis, in a last attempt to save his life.

Hux has no way of knowing if it is true, but later, when he wrapped his hands around the Commandant's throat, Brendol Hux senior told he that he had cried for his son.

In death, his father had loved him.  In response, Hux showed him no mercy.

—Going Forwards—

 

 

Hux is slammed to the ground and pinned by the ceiling.  For precious minutes the weight of duracrete is all he can sense before the screams and the sirens and the heat filter through.

The world outside is hot and frantic, but curled over beneath the debris, Hux is no longer a General : he is not even a grown man.  He is a child, thin and pale and sensitive : the boy with his mother's red hair who never recovered from her death.  He gasps in shock, involuntarily, because in this moment he is trapped in the memory of suffocation, pulling air uselessly into his body.  He is crushed by rubble, screaming for his father, slowly suffocating as he uses up his last breath of air.

A trickle of blood between his shoulder blades brings Hux back to himself.  When he flexes his fingers he realises that he is dripping with it.  There is a body strewn over him, bloated and bloody.  It has protected him from the impact.

{{ internal systems at maximum capacity }} he notes grimly, as he carefully pushes upwards.  The crushing weight above him shifts slightly.  {{ update from col. kaplan : rebel attack : repeat : rebel attack }}  Hux dismisses the useless information as he heaves with all his might, to no avail.

Suddenly the pressure is relieved, and Hux has space to roll out from under the corpse and onto his back.  His arm gives a horrific wrench as he pulls it free.  

The General looks up, to where the ceiling of forward ops had been only moments before.  He can see through both stories of the base to the sky above, streaked with sunset, and smoke, and the cat-and-mouse trails of TIE-Fighters chasing X-Wings.  Cables and wires hang down like vines, sparking electrical fires that have begun to engulf the room.

When Hux twists his neck, he can see the fire reflect off a pair of gleaming trooper’s greaves.

“Captain.”

Phasma has no time for permission.  She reaches down and hefts him to his feet.  Hux braces himself against her pockmarked armour. 

“Get to the Finaliser.”

Hux knows she will hear him even within the chaos.  Phasma can follow the protocols every bit as well as he.  As soon as Hux releases his hold on her, she turns and marches away.  

He turns his attention to his own state.  It is only now that he realises his left arm is hanging at his side uselessly.  {{ structural integrity compromised : supply cut off from left scapula }}  Hux grits his teeth and silences the sirens in his head : all but a single imperative :  {{ initiate escape protocols }}

The General reaches for the pistol at his belt : awkwardly with his right hand across his body.  When he pulls it out, he finds it is crushed, unusable.  He throws it away in disgust and turns to the bloody corpse by his feet.

When Hux crouches and relieves the body of its officer's pistol, he recognises Kessen’s pulped face and glazed eyes.  _The Resistance saved me a bullet :_ he thinks cruelly as he turns away.

Hux moves through the fire and into the scorched hallways.  He has no adrenaline to suppress the pain of his injuries, but he has something altogether more effective.  {{ block auxiliary pain receptors : get to the hanger }}

As Hux moves further away from the chaos of forward ops, his back straightens and his strides lengthen.  Dazed officers and stormtroopers blown away from their units scatter the corridors, and they pick out Hux's uniform as he passes.  They gather behind the General, as if his red hair and his black lapels are a rescue beacon calling them in.  

When Hux hears shouting in the distance he lifts his pistol high, and he senses that behind him his troops have shuffled into formation with the kind of obedience that only the First Order can achieve.  Hux advances with a grim smile as ahead the scent of blaster fire and the sound of chaos grow strong.  Hux takes great pleasure in rounding the corner and dispatching a Resistance fighter with a single shot.

The General aims again and fires with ruthless efficiency, barely concerned by the returned fire.  His black officer's coat is heavy with blood and his arm swings wildly by his side.  Hux whirls and searches for another target, then another.  He strides up to a Resistance fighter with their back to him and dispatches them with a lethal blow to the back of the skull using his pistol.

The soldier falls to the ground, revealing Kylo Ren before him, red saber raised in defence of an attack that never comes.  The creature's black mask reflects the electrical fire behind him, and for a moment Hux is sure that their eyes are locked.  Then the General turns and shoots another infiltrator.

When Ren turns away and continues down the corridor, Hux follows.  There is no time to be wary of Snoke’s apprentice.  Their minds are bent towards the same purpose : escape.  Hux's collection of officers and troopers trail them both, providing cover fire.

Resistance fighters fall with disturbing efficiency before their combined assault.  Ahead of the General, Ren deflects another attack, throwing a body into a wall with a flick of his wrist.  Then an access panel blows up in the knight's path, putting him momentarily on the defensive.  Snoke's creature cuts the first man down with his infernal saber.  The fight is a mess of severed limbs and plasma.

Before Hux can join the fray, another panel erupts beside him, blowing him backwards.  A youth in a Resistance uniform is on him instantly.

The General is backed against the metal wall, a blaster aimed at his head.  But Hux's hands are steel-strong and his grip breaks the fragile finger bones that inch towards the trigger.  The boy glares at him with righteous hatred and manages to shoot, setting off a warning siren through the General's mind.  {{ right ear compromised }}  The smell of burnt hair, smoke and blood are intoxicating.

Gritting his teeth, Hux kicks the feet from under his opponent and shoots him at point-blank range with his own weapon.  He throws away the shoddy blaster and, retrieving his own pistol, takes out another invading body.

When Hux turns back towards escape, Ren has already moved off without a glance back, his cloak billowing behind him.  The General smooths down his hair, surreptitiously checking for damage to his steel cranium.  A singed ear, nothing more.  He marches after the knight.


	2. Act I.II Out of the Caves

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The evacuation continues.

—H—

 

 

Ren pounds onto the gantry overlooking the hanger, and Hux’s boots click on the metal walkway as he follows.  Below, scores of personnel try to maintain some semblance of order in their panic as they hurry onboard an array of ships.  Thirty or more vessels are still on the ground.

Behind them there is a harsh burst of blaster fire and a band of Resistance fighters thunder into view, scattering the General's troops.  Hux spins wildly, raising his weapon.

Suddenly, the floor buckles.  Ren grabs a fistful of Hux's black coat, his other gloved hand finding the railing.  Around them, an explosion detonates into a powerful fireball that takes the hanger with it.  The ships are swallowed in flames; the gantry groans and tilts drunkenly sideways.

Hux's pistol slips from his grip and it is lost to the fire.  He turns, reaching blindly for the railing.  The metal is molten hot to the touch but Hux is in a different kind of agony : he gapes down at the hole seared through his side from a blaster shot.  

{{ warning : data corruption : war// }} Hux watches blurrily as Ren's saber rolls to the edge of the platform, before it is stopped by an unseen force.  Fire surrounds his vision.

Ren releases the General, retrieves his weapon, and runs the length of the gantry as it begins to collapse into the fire.  Hux finds the strength to follow, clutching his side in acute pain.  Their trail of officers has caught fire and smoulders behind them.

Ren leaps from the gantry, landing on two feet gracefully, and he fights through the flames to stable ground.  Hux shuts off his internal alarms and takes a running jump from the meshed steel as it falls away beneath him.

The General lands with a crack on his numbed arm.  His scream of agony is drawn from his throat and lost to the flames.  It is so hot that he feels as if his synthetic skin is melting.  The only cool point on his body is the injury to his side, from which clear liquid leaks and drips pink with Kessen’s stale blood.

Hux shudders and crawls shakily to his feet.  His body cries out to its occupant, corrupted circuits and sparking wires sickening his stomach.  Hux blinks twice, resetting his optics, and focusses on his single imperative : escape.  He searches the smoke for Ren.

Half of the hanger has caved into the service floors below, leaving a gaping maw of flames behind it.  The blast doors have sealed, blocking them from the planet of Bakura.  Ren strides to the doors and stretches out his hands dramatically.  They shudder, as though quelled by the dark figure.  

Hux watches the creature work, his mind racing.  The General is not a being with many fears, but the worst of them find him as a child trapped under rubble, bent out of shape; or as a slab of metal being bifurcated on a Resistance gurney, having his wires ripped out and his data syphoned.  Without his pistol, Hux is aware that Snoke's magic-wielder, though unpredictable, remains his only weapon.

The doors shriek as Ren plants his feet and pulls harder at his invisible strings, but Hux can see in an instant that the being has no knowledge of the base.  Waltzing out through the hanger will see them gunned down before they reach the trees.

When the General calls out to him, Ren turns, the chrome bands of his mask licked by fire.  Hux crouches down on the floor of the ruined hanger, aware of his injuries tearing anew with each movement.  His fingers scrabble at the faint outline of a maintenance panel on the floor.  When he pries it open, Ren strides over.

For a moment, Hux is sure Snoke's apprentice intends to abandon him to his wounds.  Instead, Ren shimmies down into the narrow hole.  His helmet resounds off the metal sides as he fits his overly-large body into the gap.

Hux follows.  Inside, a ladder leads them vertically down into the bowels of the base.  Screams and gunfire echo through the wiring as they pull themselves downwards, until finally they reach the caves at the tunnel’s end.

Hux shimmies into the gloom, pulling his ungainly left arm through behind him.  His black boots thud dully on the rock floor.  Ren has moved to one side, examining the chrome walls where jagged stone meets the artificial base.  In Hux’s mind, a schematic of the rabbit's warren of caves upon which the base was built unfolds, downloaded from the Finaliser's servers long before the General set foot on the planet.  

Once he has located the nearest exit his mind turns to the wound at his side.  The tang of copper and aqueous fluid has filled Hux’s mouth, and his brain flashes with warning signals.  Slowly, he allows himself to collapse against the cave wall, his hand gingerly placed over the wound to keep it from view.

His instincts tell him that it is much worse than it looks.

The General raises his head when he feels a presence looming over him.  Both hands are pressed hard to his side, to contain his fluids, and to obscure the lack of fresh blood from Ren.  Hux’s skin has turned deathly white, and his limbs shake slightly as torn wires spark in his chest.  

Ren is speaking now, moving restlessly above him, his voice crackling over Hux's senses.  He sounds mocking.  The General ignores the knight’s exhale of breath and the words that they form.

With every second Hux shuts off another pain receptor : dangerous, to ignore his body's warnings, but necessary : and Ren's words become more gratingly coherent.  "What a shining indictment of the First Order this has proven to be, General.  Standard _minutes_ after I set foot on the planet, Bakura has been overrun by insurgents, and I am watching one of the Order's highest-ranking officers bleed out in a damp cave.  Truly an army worthy of the Empire’s legacy."

Hux would dearly like to tear off one of those black limbs.  Instead, he works with his functioning hand to get his belt free from his black uniform, and thrusts it towards Ren.  With some effort, he forces sound from his own throat.  “Bind my wound,” he rasps.

For a moment Hux appreciates the blissful silence.  Then Ren barks out a short, deep laugh.  “And why would I do that, General?  I see no reason why I shouldn't leave you here to die.”

Hux struggles to remain convincing when he can feel clear fluid leaking from the corner of his mouth.  He wants to spit it at the mask.  “Rescue protocols//” he manages instead.  His vocal modulator is starting to malfunction.  One part of his mind is viciously deleting corrupted data files and writing new code while the rest of his strength is focussed on convincing Ren.

“Considering the ease with which Resistance spies managed to place detonators throughout your base, my expectations are limited.”  Ren drawls.

Hux does a full-body twitch of annoyance : or possibly caused by fusing wires.  His core temperature has sky-rocketed : his brain is fighting a losing battle to maintain homeostasis while ripped wiring fizzles in his abdomen.  The General tries to think through the fever.

“You may have your sword and your magic, Ren,” he scoffs, "but you have no way of communicating with the First Order, and thus no way of escaping Bakura without my help.  Even// even if you could hail the Finaliser, there are only three officers who know you have any authority within the Order.  One of them has been flattened under duracrete.”  Hux smiles grimly at the memory of Kessen's bloody body.  He holds out the belt again, eyes fixed on Ren's mask.  “Get me into the forest.  I will contact Captain Phasma and secure a rescue vessel.  My only demand is that you get my body to the Finaliser.  Dead or alive.”

Hux's eyes close and his head tilts back in exhaustion.  He is completely at the mercy of Snoke's apprentice, but he is too far gone to truly care.  It has been an age since the General felt so vulnerable.

Ren keeps him waiting for what seems like an age.  Then a gloved hand reaches out and takes the sash from Hux's slack grip.  Hux is aware of the change in air pressure as Ren kneels down.  When the knight pulls his body forward by his lapels, the General goes willingly.

Hux's hands remain firmly over his wound until the moment the sash binds it.  Ren ties it bone-crushingly tight around his waist and Hux's dizziness finally starts to fade.

Ren stands fluidly and bends down to pull Hux bodily to his feet with a vicious yank.  The General staggers upright, allowing a groan to escape his throat.  Dimly, he is aware that he is leaning heavily on an oversized, humanoid body.  When his logic circuits inform him that it is Ren, Hux staggers away into the cave wall.  

Ren watches this display in silence, before asking with a flat kind of amusement : “Where to next, General?”

Hux levels the knight with a vicious glare.  “Speeder bikes,” he explains as the world dips and sways.  “This way.”  Hux closes his eyes and follows his internal map, stumbling over every loose stone.  Ren follows him at a distance.  

 

 

—K—

 

 

Far beneath the earth, Kylo's senses are dampened.  After the thrill of battle, the quiet of the caves feels unnatural.  The General, too, is unnervingly quiet.

The beam from the Resistance blaster has torn a hole through the back of the General's coat, and through the flesh and sinew beyond.  Only the bloodied black sash and the limp left arm convey the extent of Hux's wounds.  Kylo cannot help but feel slightly impressed that the thin, unpromising figure of a man is still standing.

As they move through the caves, the hollow scrape of boots and the far-off sounds of skirmishes are the only noises that break the silence.  If Hux is placing his life in the knight's hands, then Kylo is responding in kind, following the dying man through this stone maze.  Kylo wonders to himself whether the sudden explosion has unsettled him more than he would like to admit.

Kylo stares at the man's perfectly uniform auburn hair.  He pushes against the General's defences through the Force, testing for weakness.  Hux gives no indication that he senses the pressure, but Kylo finds his mind elastic and impenetrable still.  

Hux stops abruptly when the stone meets pale moonlight.  Above, instead of metal, cold air filters through and Kylo cannot help but feel relieved at the sight, though the emotion is beneath him.

The General shies away from the light, instead approaching the metal wall of the base and feeling along its surface.  Before Kylo can demand an explanation, Hux finds a concealed switch and flicks it to reveal a keypad.  Above, there is a boom, then a clang.  Kylo's hand twitches.  The Resistance's last push, perhaps?  Victory for the light side?  Kylo's fingers curl around the hilt of his weapon.  His eyes are trained on the cave behind them.

Finally, a scrape of hinges signals the General's success.  He draws a section of the wall aside to reveal stacks of compact folded machinery - speeder bikes, camouflaged in greens and greys.

Wordlessly, Kylo steps forward and grips one of the bikes, hefting it from the rack.  It deploys, rising to hover above the cave floor.  The knight swings his leg over the bike and primes the engine, his every muscle tensed.

Hux edges forward towards the bike, his face lined with disgust.  His eyes keep glancing back to the rack, as if assessing whether he has the strength to pull one down himself.  

“You won't be able to steer one armed.”  Kylo snaps when he does nothing.  Hux still seems conflicted.

Kylo is about to bark an order to get the General moving, when the dim holler of a group of Resistance fighters filters through to them.  With the underground acoustics, it is impossible to tell how far away they might be.  Kylo reaches through the Force and does not like what he finds.

“Now.” He growls.  Hux springs into action at last, striding forward and climbing on the speeder behind Kylo.  His arm snakes around to grip awkwardly at the knight's black cloak.  Kylo swings the bike around and guns the engine.

As they speed forward the machine dips and hums loudly under the weight of the two men, but there is no time for easing into it - Kylo rests two fingers on the speeder's triggers as they approach the cave entrance, finally starting to gain real speed.

The cool Bakura night air hits them in a wave as they break through to the outside world.  Kylo's eyes are focussed ahead, on the dark band of trees.  They are separated from him by a swathe of open ground perfect for cutting down intruders.

The sensation of hundreds of lives being destroyed makes Kylo’s senses ignite like a blaster shot.

When the first rounds from an outpost gun whizz past their heads, the knight swerves instinctively.  The whine of an alarm and the snap snap snap of floodlights throwing their shadow into stark relief against the grass has both men sinking lower against the bike, trying to urge it to go faster.  Kylo battles with the contraption, revving the engine even as it groans beneath their weight.  He swerves again, wincing as the bike grinds and shakes beneath him.

At his back, the General is hunched over, trying to protect his damaged side.  At the buzz of incoming speeders Hux's forehead comes to rest on Kylo's back.  The gesture is surprisingly intimate.

Kylo has no time to consider it.  From the left, the knight sees movement, and he changes course suddenly to throw off the impending attack.  Hux's arm grabs more securely around Kylo's waist in terror as the bike careens sideways.  They are both forced to lean deeply into the next turn to avoid falling.

Finally they enter the forest of huge, fir-like trees, and their pursuers scatter.  Kylo's powers are working on overdrive, sending them winding through the huge trunks while avoiding enemy fire.

Hux is plastered against his back now, both bodies leaning into each nail-biting turn.  When Kylo feels the odd prickle of electricity on his ribs, he turns, worried that the bike is shaking apart beneath them.  All he can see is Hux's red hair, and the action throws them off-balance.  Hux gurgles with fear in his ear as Kylo turns to wrest control back.  

They narrowly avoid fireballing into one of the gargantuan trees, covering in hanging vines the width of human bodies.  The Resistance fighter behind them is not so lucky, and the feeling of heat on his shoulders makes Kylo smile viciously.

Ahead the knight senses danger.  A speeder has cut around them and is about to take them by surprise.  Another is getting dangerously close on the left.  

Kylo's focus is thrown off again by Hux, who has released the knight's waist to try and reach for his saber.  He manages to get a few fingers on the weapon before Kylo is forced to turn sharply to avoid getting caught between a tree trunk and a speeder gun.  Hux grabs at him frantically - Kylo can hear his multi-lingual cursing clearly in one ear.  He corners the bike again jerkily in response: _shut up, hang on and don’t kriffing try to help_ , is the non-verbal command.

There is no more time to prepare as the incoming enemy crashes through the trees and tries to take them head on.  The surprise is lost on Kylo.  Hux shouts and grips him painfully tight.

Kylo veers left brutally, sending one enemy spiralling into a tree.  The heat of the fireball makes his smile widen beneath the mask to include teeth.  Now two speeders are drawing level with them - the rest have fallen behind, lost to the forest.  For a moment all three bikes line up, and they are surrounded.

One Resistance fighter fumbles for his blaster.  Kylo pulls the bike up sharply, holding the mechanisms together with all his concentration.  Hux is pressed against his back, swearing in his ear, and Kylo can feel liquid seeping into his tunic - blood.  He drops down again sharply.

In two fluid motions, Kylo takes out the bike’s engine and crashes into it, driving it into the ground.  Kylo wrests with the controls, narrowly avoiding the pinwheeling lump of metal as it sears overhead.

Now they are angled towards the ground, and Hux's body is slipping sideways.  Kylo's mind cannot contain his own power as he lifts them with all his might, just before they meet the earth.

They are level again.  Kylo gulps for breath beneath the mask.  Hux is limp and shaking behind him, finally terrified speechless.  Kylo waits for the bike’s shaking to subside gradually.

Bakura's night deepens around them, splintered by shafts of moonlight from its moons and far off Endor.  Resistance speeders in the distance still bite at the edges of Kylo's mind - they are not safe yet.

The General's head comes to rest, exhausted, between the knight's shoulder blades.  As they speed forward, the trees seem to become bigger.  Little by little, Kylo feels the General's grip on his tunic loosen.

 

*

 

Finally they slow to the edge of a clearing, and Kylo decides that they are far enough away from the base to risk sending a transmission.  No doubt they will be tracked from the moment they do, but they have bought themselves some time, at least.  He comes to a skidding stop, the bike beneath him well and truly destroyed.  Kylo dismounts from the speeder, and turns to find Hux still bent forward over the bike, eyes closed.  

The knight grasps the General’s left arm to pull him down and Hux's eyes fly open.  “Don’t touch me Ren,” he spits as he breaks Kylo’s hold and applies one of his own, right fist gripping the front of the knight’s cloak with surprising strength.

Kylo is dimly aware of the phantom sensation of Hux’s arm in his fingers - a heavy dead weight slick with blood, limp and slimy as a Jabba’s tail.  Kylo’s black glove is damp with pink ichor.  “I still have strength left”, Hux insists grimly, still curled over to protect his damaged side.

“The injury to your arm is severe.”  Kylo comments quietly, his mask inches from Hux’s face.  Rather than respond, Hux pushes him backwards with an impressive shove.  Then he tries to dismount, crumpling sideways painfully.  Kylo pulls Hux to his feet despite the man’s weak attempts to fend him off, noting that Hux’s expression manages to stay impressively slack.  “Why does your arm not trouble you more, General?” 

“I’m in kriffing shock.”  Hux snaps, as if the answer should be obvious.  His protests are getting weaker as Kylo drags him over to the base of one of the towering trees.

Kylo settles against the bark and pulls Hux down in front of him, until he is oddly cradled by the knight’s body.  He ignores their position in favour of rooting through the pockets of Hux’s blood-soaked officer’s coat.  Hux mutters and coughs painfully in protest before finally giving in.

“Where is it?  The communicator?”

The General pushes his hands away and fumbles inside the lining of the coat.  His body twists to reach with his good hand, and beneath his mask Kylo winces at how in reveals his wound.  Without thought, Kylo presses his own hand to Hux’s damaged side.

Hux is so pale he seems to have lost all the fluid in his body.  When he finally finds the tiny communicator he fumbles with it in shaky fingers for a moment before he manages to depress it.  Kylo watches in silence as he pushes the instrument in his ear.

Hux’s voice is scratchy and laboured when he hails the Finaliser, and his eyebrows draw together as he listens intently to the response.  The hair there is paler than on his head, Kylo notices absently.  The knight strains to pick up the crackle of static that is Captain Phasma’s voice.

“Ten standard minutes?”  Hux rasps at last.  “We’ll be waiting.  Over and out.”  He pulls the communicator out of his ear and crushes it easily in his palm.

“Only ten?”  Kylo comments mildly, watching Hux’s face.

The General is still staring at the mangled black metal in his hand.  When he speaks, there is an odd note of humour to his voice.  “The First Order _does_ have rescue protocols Ren.”  Kylo is too unsettled by his slack expression to respond.

The pair sit in silence for a few minutes.  Kylo’s mind stretches out through the Force, sensing Resistance speeders combing the forest around them.  They will come upon them soon, if their communication hasn’t already been intercepted.  They buzz like flies at the edges of Kylo’s consciousness, but he is distracted by the limp weight of the General’s body against him.

Hux is unsettling.  Perhaps it is the contrast between the man he met hours ago and the half-man half-corpse lying against him now.  Perhaps it is their proximity, tearing through Kylo’s years of isolation.  Perhaps it is the tang of blood and something more.

When the General starts laughing quietly to himself, Kylo’s eyes focus on him in alarm.  Hux jerks as if realising their position only now, but he doesn’t get far before he is forced to settle again, this time with his back propped awkwardly against Kylo’s outstretched arm.  The knight doesn’t remember reaching out to catch him.

Hux is cursing between huffed, scratchy laughter.  Kylo has to lean over him to keep his right hand pressed to his wound.  It has reopened; he can feel it.  Hux curses the Resistance and the ground of Bakura and Commander Kessen’s flattened body.  He curses Kylo.  The knight sees the fever in the General’s eyes and feels dread well up inside himself.

Hux’s head lolls backwards, grey eyes cloudy with suppressed pain.  In the moonlight, he seems much younger than Kylo had first thought him.  Shorter, too, and not so broad as he had appeared standing ram-rod straight in front of a squadron of troopers.  Hux’s shoulders are bony beneath his coat, and they shake with delirious laughter.

“That _kriff-_ kriffing mask,” Hux spits out, through the laughter and the glass in his throat, “will be the last kriffing thing I see.”

Hux’s laughter fades into a whimper.  Kylo feels strangely affected by his distaste.  The moonlight has washed out his red hair until it matches his skin - bloodless.

Kylo’s eyes lock with Hux’s unfocussed gaze.  One of his hands is pressed against his side and soaked with blood.  The other has unlatched his cowl and is pulling it over his head.  Hux is silent now - not even a breath.  He is staring upwards.

Kylo has taken off his helmet.  He cannot say why.

In the clammy night air, his skin is almost as pale as Hux’s.  Kylo’s sweaty black curls are plastered to his forehead.  His eyes are dark and wide and his mouth is downturned.  After what feels like days in the mask, he is relieved to feel the cool breeze against his skin.  Hux is staring.

Kylo watches the wind run through the General’s hair - he shivers with it, shoulders shaking, but still he does not speak.  Kylo pulls him closer instinctively.  The silence stretches on.

Then the chuckling comes again, quietly.  Hux’s eyes close, and Kylo wants to shake him like a mechanical doll, to have them flick open again.  “You’re a kriff- a kriff-“  The General’s hand clutches Kylo’s tunic.  “A kriffing child.”  He manages at last.  Kylo frowns and Hux laughs.

They are both interrupted by a muffled beeping - the communicator.  Above, the hum of shuttle engines is carried to them on an artificial breeze.  Kylo looks down to order the General to his feet.

Hux has opened his eyes, but they are cloudy - dull grey instead of pale green.  Kylo’s hand releases Hux’s wound to grab at his shoulder, turning the General’s body towards him.  But Hux isn’t breathing.  His eyes are fixed on the sky, and his body is perfectly limp.  For a moment, Kylo can only stare into his unfocussed gaze.

Then, very carefully, the knight stands.  The shuttle is close enough to block out the moonlight now, and the engines whip up the hem of Kylo’s cloak.  In the distance, Resistance fighters have turned their speeders in the direction of the unidentified craft.  

Kylo feels impotent rage building from his stomach to his throat.  He lifts Hux’s body into his arms roughly, and staggers towards the ship as it touches down.

The shuttle doors open and a squad of stormtroopers run out to meet him, carrying a stretcher between them.  Kylo drops the body on the stretcher and pulls his lightsaber from his belt.  There is a dizzying well of anger inside him, and his hands shake as he ignites his weapon.

The first speeder crashes into the clearing and Kylo turns on instinct to block its forward gun.  The second bolt he deflects back to the speeder, which bursts into flames.  Kylo’s rage is only stoked by the blaze - he itches for battle.  A second speeder is thrown into a tree.  Kylo has lost control of the Force.  Pure fury compels him to kill.

Dimly, the shouts of stormtroopers reach him, calling him on board.  There is no time now to hunt down every Resistance fighter on this planet and return their vitality to the fabric of the Force.  Kylo wrenches himself away from battle and runs towards the shuttle.  He thunders on board as more Resistance troops break through the trees.  

The First Order vessel lifts off as blaster shots ricochet against its hull.

Kylo sinks to the metal floor, his breathing heavy.  The troopers move around him warily.  From the corner of his eye, Kylo can see an officer in black armour leaning over Hux’s prone body.

Hux’s body does not move.  His mind is silent.  Kylo’s mind is a storm, screaming and thrashing and dashing itself against his skull.

The shuttle speeds away from Bakura, relinquishing it to the Resistance.


	3. Act I.III The Faceless Menace

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Back to the Finaliser.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow this chapter fought me. Now that I read it back it's probably because it's a string of conversations, each one tenser than the one before it. 
> 
> I needed motivation to rewrite the mess that was my first draft, so I re-read the comments I've gotten on this fic so far. Then I blasted into a rewrite and I suddenly fell for this draft a bit. I hope you guys find some things worth reading in it too, and thank you for the lovely comments from the last two chapters.

—K—

 

 

Another shuttle, another hanger bay, another row of officers with steely expressions.  When Kylo stumbles off the spacecraft, he even sees a General from the corner of his eye, with the crisp uniform and the ginger hair and the sneer - but when he turns sharply, head spinning, he finds a petty officer staring back at him, terrified.

Kylo is distracted by the troopers exiting the shuttle behind him.  Between them they are carrying a stretcher.  Now there really is a flash of red in the corner of his vision.

The Finaliser is too big.  Captain Phasma is waiting for him, and though her voice booms through the hanger bay, Kylo hears her words only dimly - demanding a debriefing, asking about the General’s wounds…

Kylo has no time for her.  He is watching the progress of the stretcher across the vast expanse of the hanger bay.  The troopers have handed it over to medical droids, but their progress is slow.  The Finaliser’s hanger bay is far too kriffing big.

Kylo’s mind is blurred and shaky as it carries him to his quarters.  He remembers, vaguely, being ordered to report to medical, stumbling through the unknown ship, spitting and snarling in the helmeted face of a stormtrooper to locate his rooms.  

Kylo has no intention of going to medical.  Hux’s body is in medical.

The knight’s thoughts are staticky - as if he is receiving a holo-call from the farthest reaches of the Galaxy.  He stumbles into his officer’s quarters and sags heavily against the first piece of furniture he meets, a desk chair.  He breathes deeply, in and then out, but the static is still in his head.

Kylo’s next coherent thought is of a shuddering, jerking descent to the floor of his refresher.  There is freezing water slewing through his hair.  He waits for it to wash away the adrenaline, his eyes squeezed shut.

It occurs to Kylo then, kneeling on the tiled floor, that he isn’t wearing his cowl, and he cannot remember taking it off.  Was it discarded when he tore through the ship, or in the shuttle, or even in the clearing on Bakura?  Kylo might have been crashing through the Finaliser with crazed eyes and blood matted in his curls.  The thought makes him sick.

By the time Kylo staggers to his feet, the ‘fresher has finished its drying sequence, and the chill has been drawn from his bones.  Still, he shakes slightly as he pulls himself from the washroom over to his bed.  Adrenaline, he tells himself, is the cause.

Meditation, Kylo knows, is his only recourse.  But the battle weighs heavily on his mind, keeping him from the reassuring void of anger that is the dark side.  Kylo cannot summon rage now - it has been washed away.

The knight’s body sinks sideways onto the mattress.  His black robes rub against his skin, cracking with stains that a refresher cannot remove.  Absently, he realises that he had been kneeling under the spray fully clothed.  The thought is too much for him to process.

Kylo sinks into sleep, still covered in the blood of dead men.

 

 

—H—

 

 

—Going Backwards—

Though children do not often remember their own birth, Hux remembers his.

It was a gradual process : not a sudden burst of consciousness, but a realisation over days, weeks, perhaps longer.  Hux remembers feeling dim, distant murmurs as vibrations against his naked skin.  He remembers the comforting claustrophobia of suspension in a bacta tank.

In the years after his death, Commandant Hux had made many crazed attempts to bring his son to life.  For Hux, being forced back into consciousness had felt like an explosion.  Suddenly, everywhere there was noise and light and the memories of a scared child suffocating under duracrete.  

Each birth was violent and ended in violence.  Hux has blurred but painfully strong memories of being held down, disassembled, his brain ripped from its latest artificial body and suffocated into stasis again.  Hux always failed to be the boy his father wanted to reconstruct, and for that he was destroyed countless times.

But finally he was born : finally, there was no pain.  Instead, there was the sensation of cool liquid filling his lungs, sliding through his fingers : a protective barrier between him and the outside world.

Hux remembers the first thought : suffocation, as always.  But unlike his father’s attempts, this time Hux did not panic, because the memory of death was no longer his own.  Hux was a new being, with strength and purpose.  He painstakingly constructed his mind while weightless and calm.

There was, beneath the wires and circuits, a child‘s brain : but that did not make Hux that child.  He was a grown man : no, an android, without the need for growing.  He had memories of his former self, though some were lost, others warped, from his father’s cruel work.  Hux took pleasure, as he waited to be born, in breaking down the fragile consciousness of that dead boy and replacing it with steel and synthetic polymer.

Some information remained : he was still Armitage Hux, a human male, an officer of the Empire, a fugitive of the New Republic.  But steadily a new, improved Hux developed.  The fear and the rejection that had grown like fungus in the dark and damp of his mind for years was expunged : replaced with computing power, synthetic strength, and knowledge of the Master, superior in every way to his father, who had created him.

The moment of Hux’s birth was still a shock, the kind that makes human new-borns squall and kick as they are introduced to the world.  Hux did not cry out, but his computers screamed as they were forcefully booted-up, and he was extracted.

There was the sensation of sliding from liquid, of his body being pulled from its bacta-womb by the unforgiving metal claws of service droids.  There was the scorching heat of the air against skin as soft as unmarred as baby-flesh.  There was the electricity that ran through the length of his body, making his muscles jerk and his mouth open on a gasp.  

There was the space in his chest where the weight of his heart once rested.  Its absence made Hux feel lighter.

The droids watched Hux’s naked, gasping, choking panic impassively.  Slowly, he gained control over his limbs, his skin pressed to the hot metal floor.  He felt ill, his insides scorched with every breath : it was then that he realised that the breathing was pointless.

He stopped.  Slowly, his head cleared.

Carefully, deliberately, he gathered himself to his feet, the panic gone.  There were no shaky first steps.  Hux was fully-formed, a lanky teenager no more.

He got his bearings quickly.  He knew he had been born, and he knew he was on the planet of Mustafa.  He knew he was in a laboratory, and that the many tortured souls he passed on his way through it were experiments for a single purpose : his own rebirth.

He knew of his creator.  Snoke’s presence called to him as a repeated line of code: 

{{ report to the supreme leader }}

It made him turn away from the drained tank and the nightmarish black droids and the operating tables, and in the direction of his Master.

He knew he was an android.

He knew it by the faces that stared back at him with the same pale eyes and the same red hair, from gurney after gurney.  He knew it the moment he stood before the towering, inhuman figure of Snoke, after pulling himself into a crisp black uniform.

The thought did not distress him.  In that moment, the Supreme Leader’s triumph was his triumph.  

In that moment, the General was born.

—Going Forwards—

Snoke’s design is flawless : Hux’s body and mind work in ruthless unison.  Beneath his synthetic skin, organic computing and wiring and lubricant are perfectly balanced.

Hux’s loyalty is firmly in his Master’s hands.  He is a satellite, small but durable.  The Supreme Leader is a terrible, dark, invisible force that alters the path of every object in the Galaxy, sentient or not, to even the largest neutron star.  He is the black hole around which the cosmos spin.

Hux is not afraid to know that he will someday be swallowed into that gaping darkness.  Then, there will be no more painful resurrections, just one, glorious end.  The General is Snoke’s, to be created and destroyed as his Master sees fit.

{{ //establishing connection// systems reboot }}

Before Hux opens his artificial eyes, he knows that Snoke is out there still, in the Galaxy.  He also knows is that he is no longer on Bakura.

 

*

 

Hux cannot remember his childhood home.

He tries, as he lies half-comatose on a metal gurney, wires stretching from ports between his shoulder-blades, and from the socket at the base of his skull, into the Finaliser’s hardware.

His father’s constant suspicion had kept the First Order in motion, out of the range of X-Wings, while other Imperial factions fell to the Resistance.  For a young boy unsuited to the life of a soldier, it had been a bleak childhood, struggling to subsist at the edge of the Galaxy.

If, now, he was forced to pick a home, Hux would choose the Finaliser.  The atmosphere of restrained violence and rigid order that permeates this great machine would have repelled nervous young Armitage.  By contrast, Hux feels an affinity for his ship : it is not the largest vessel in the Order’s fleet, but the Finaliser is a formidable opponent, easily underestimated.

Hux’s connection to his ship is both mental and physical : particularly now, as he syphons its energy, as it gives him strength.

This connection is not some shallow exchange of electrons.  Hux can feel his ship as it cuts through the Galaxy, as it expands and contracts with the collective breaths of its personnel and the cycle of reactors that propel it through Space.  Hux breathes in and out himself, in sympathy.  He is reminded that he has no lungs to fill, and no heart to beat, and the thought gives him strength.

The General sets his optics and stares upwards.  For a moment, his last memory surfaces : a black mask, pulled off to reveal a startling face, pale, untouched by age and highlighted by moles, where he expected to find post-human features and scars to match the Supreme Leader’s.

Then the light coalesces, into a sight to which Hux is well-accustomed.  Armoured black figures with sloping masks instead of faces ring his body.  He shivers at the symmetry as the boy in his memory fades into their reflective visors.

Yet the Engineers are as much a part of the Finaliser as Hux feels he is himself, and so they mean that he is safe.  Saved.

To one side, as familiar as the faceless men poring over his semi-naked body, looms the Captain.  In the gloom of Hux’s android laboratory, deep in the bowels of the ship, Phasma’s armour is not a blinding chrome, but a dull silver.

“Captain.”  With a flick of his eyes Hux commands the Engineers, who set about folding the gurney.  They unstrap him from above the waist so he can sit up and address his Captain properly.

Phasma stands to attention, removes her cowl and salutes.  “Sir.”  Another point in the Captain’s favour : she is a creature of few words.

After a moment of uncertainty, Hux tests his voice.  “How is my recovery progressing?”

“The blaster wound was clean, although it caused a host of internal issues which took upwards of twelve hours to rewire.  It has left its mark, of course.  Unless you were to have the skin stripped from your endo-”

“And of course, there is no time for that Captain.”  Hux nods sharply.  The fingers of his right hand stray to the new skin that has been grafted over the indent in his stomach : a grey, unyielding bio-mesh which stands out against the softer, paler polymer.  “And my left arm?”  The General’s fingers move to his shoulder.  He tests the limb carefully, holding up his hand to examine his thin fingers.  The arm lacks muscle, and when Hux twists it as if to aim a pistol, it feels like a mental trick : a phantom limb.

“A cloned replacement, sir.  The closest they could come to the original.  It may cause you some difficulties.”

“It will be sufficient.”  There is no time : no time to set a course for Mustafa, where his brain could be transferred into an unmarked body.  There is no time to float in bacta for months, while the fickle officers of the First Order forget that Hux leads them, or that Snoke’s word is their law.  “Call the fleet together.   We must rally decisively against the Resistance, turn the tables, exact revenge.  I will not be judged by Commander Kessen’s incompetence.”

Phasma nods sharply.

After a moment, Hux asks the question he has been avoiding.  “What about Ren?”

Phasma’s mouth twists in a movement startling close to amusement.

“I have not been able to obtain a full debriefing of your escape, sir… but you certainly inspired loyalty of some kind in _Lord_ Ren.”

“Loyalty?  In that creature?”  Hux grimaces at the thought : the thought of Ren’s eyes, dark in the moonlight, staring down at him as if the world was ending.

“You inspired something, sir.”  When Hux resets his optics, Phasma looks as though she is on the edge of a smirk.  “He thundered off the shuttle like a madman.  I was told that he found his way to his quarters.  Mitaka even reports of him stalking the ship, mask-less.  Apparently he is not the gundark you suspected him to be, but rather-”

Hux’s eyes flicker irritably.  “Yes yes _it_ is human after all, I know.  What has he been doing on my ship while I have been… rebooting?”

Phasma raises an eyebrow.  “The Supreme Leader sent a communiqué at 0800, instructing Ren to report to him as soon as he wakes.”

Hux’s body twitches involuntarily.  Phasma’s expression has turned to one of distaste.  

“Furthermore, the Supreme Leader stated that Ren is to hold an _honorary_ position as commander of the fleet while he is aboard the Finaliser.”

The General’s body jerks in shock, disengaging the wire from his neck.  Engineers swarm around him to plug him back in.  Outrage is his only coherent emotion for a moment. 

“Given my rank, I can only take my contempt of Ren so far, sir.  But I will do my best to keep him away from anything… important.  I will let you know if he causes any trouble.”

Hux shifts restlessly.  “How long before I can take command of my own ship?”  

“Very few officers witnessed your unconscious state.  You will need to keep to your quarters for a few days, and then perhaps to wear a sling on deck, for appearances sake.  But currently our greatest concern is Ren-”

“He saw me offline?  There was no doubt?”

“That you were not breathing?  Unless the Supreme Leader’s apprentice is an idiot-”

“Perfectly debatable.”  Hux allows himself to sink back onto the gurney.  The Engineers flit around him as quietly as shadows, checking the readouts and ports which connect him to the ship.  “Regardless, I cannot allow a creature with Ren’s powers to be so intimately acquainted with the finer points of my anatomy.”  

Hux feels along the joints of his arm as though scratching an itch.  Phasma is right : it is going to cause him problems : though not nearly as many as Ren.

“Sir-”

//security breach : medical bay 5.11.2  // 

Phasma salutes and retreats to attend to the crisis while, Hux lies back down on the gurney at the mercy of the Engineers : but the General suspects he already knows the kind of mayhem the Captain will encounter in medical bay corridor 5.11.2.


	4. I.IV Audience with Snoke

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kylo and Hux come into contact again.

 

 

—K—

 

 

Kylo wakes to the sensation of eighty-thousand lives bearing down on him.  His Force-sensitivity has been honed to a lethal diamond’s edge, and he struggles to adjust to the overwhelming proximity of life once again.

Kylo forcefully retracts his senses, then sits up slowly.  He is drawn and pale, but calmer as he rises from the bed, and finally strips out of robes that crack with dried blood.  Kylo does not dare reach out for the dark side - for whatever comfort it may offer, he must not expose himself in this moment of vulnerability.

Kylo pulls himself back into the refresher and scrubs his body properly.  The skin of his back is mottled and sore.  There are broken ribs beneath the surface.  He grits his teeth and forces his spine straight.  There are cut on his arm from falling rubble.  There are scorch marks on his neck.  There is a slice through his tongue, bitten as he stares at the ‘fresher wall with one fist pounding the duracrete.

When Kylo emerges, he has brought his inner-turmoil under control.  It is only now that he realises that there is a presence outside his room, hazy and ill-defined, previously lost beneath the teaming life of the ship.

Hastily, Kylo trips over to the door and wrenches it open with his mind.  The presence, or rather the lack of presence - that sensation of sinking through a soup of thoughts, unable to grab on to any one of them-

General Hux is not standing on the other side of the door.  For a moment Kylo simply stares at the creature that is - a trooper of some kind, by the shape of its black armour.  But much shorter than any combat solider.  It takes him a moment to recognise one of the beings that serve the Supreme Leader.

The creature is holding out his mask in one gloved hand, the knight realises with a jolt.  Kylo wrenches it to himself viciously.  The stranger remains perfectly silent, unfazed by the display of Force-strength.

“You-”  Kylo beings to growl, flustered, when he feels a prickle of something that is not-quite-the-Force against his skin.

{{ report to the supreme leader }}

The creature turns away sharply and moves off.  The sensation retreats with it, along with Kylo’s control.  He shakes, one hand steading himself against the wall, long after the door has shut before him.

Finally, Kylo jams the cowl over his head, as if to try and block out the summons that he can feel in his chest and in his brain.  When it doesn’t work, he hastily retrieves his sabre and leaves his quarters, following the dark intent, letting it drown out every unanswered question.

*

Kylo travels through the halls of the Finaliser in long strides, forcing personnel to duck right and left to avoid him.  A stormtrooper that fails to move quickly enough is slammed against one wall in a display of brute force.  

When Kylo cuts the strings of the Force, the officer crumples to the floor puppet-like, and the knight is thrown back suddenly into the memory of explosions, and duracrete raining down from the ceiling.  

Kylo mentally forces his way through the confusion of Bakura and back into the present.  He anchors himself with Snoke’s summons and strides on.

When he stops outside the doors to the projection room, Kylo takes one last moment to try and banish his weakness.  Even as a holo, he can feel Snoke’s presence beyond the doors, waiting to prise open his mind.

Static.  Fire.  Static.  The cool breeze of Bakura, and the cooler gaze of the grey eyes that stare up at him, as he pushes his mind out in search of speeders among the trees.  Hot blood soaking into his glove from a mangled arm.  Hux's cool, glass mind dissolving away even as Kylo reaches out towards it.  The panic that is more than failure, more than the fear of disappointment, sinking into Hux’s vacant-

Kylo resurfaces with a grimace.  The taste of anguish is becoming sickening.

The Knight of Ren pushes through the doors and strides into the cavernous projection room beyond, stopping to kneel at the foot of a great dais.  The chamber cannot have been built for any purpose other than an audience with Snoke.  Any other being would get lost among the dark shadows that gather in its depths - but not Kylo’s master.  Snoke wears them comfortably.  He leans forward, eyes intent on his knight.

When Kylo raises his head to his master, it swims with familiar vertigo as Snoke invades his mind.

“Kylo Ren.”  Snoke savours the name that he picked himself, as he looks down, down, at the blood-soaked child cowering at the back of Kylo’s mind.  Ben Solo is its name.  Snoke is as unmerciful as a Sith - he picks the whimpering boy up by its throat and leers at its panic.

“Master,” Kylo chokes in sympathy.  “The ambush came soon after my arrival.  There was no time-”

“Control yourself, my apprentice.”  Snoke is no scolding father.  He is something infinitely more terrifying.   Kylo struggles to free himself from the grip of fear.

“Master.”  This time he gasps his confession, short of breath.  “I failed to sense the attack, just as I failed to prevent the Resistance from seizing the base.  And worse, the man you sent me to observe, I allowed to d-”

“I will admit.”  Snoke cocks his head, silencing Kylo with the single, disturbingly human gesture.  “I was disappointed to hear of the Order’s retreat.”

Fire licks a line up Kylo’s spine. 

“I trust you now understand the importance of reforming the First Order in pursuit of our goal - the destruction of the Resistance and the last of the Jedi.  This can only be achieved from within the Order’s ranks.  General Hux is crucial in this effort.”

Kylo’s mind plummets back into panic once more.  How could his Master not know?  The Supreme Leader would surely-

“Master.”  Kylo gets to his feet with his back straight, irons out the waver in his voice, and removes his cowl at last.  “I attempted to escape with the General.  But on our retreat from the base, he was severely injured.”  Snoke leans forward now, and with every word he speaks Kylo can see something grow amidst his master’s inhuman features - something dark and terrible.  A smile.  “He- I-”

Snoke laughs - a sound that reverberates through the projection room and rattles in Kylo’s chest.  The bloodied boy in his thoughts cowers in terror.  

Kylo wants nothing more than to be off this kriffing ship.  “Master, I could not-”  I could not save him.  Surely you are angry?  What is this, this _pleasure_ I sense in you?  Is it my weakness, or Hux’s that amuses you?  These are not the words to say to a man with Snoke’s power.

Snoke silences him with a raised hand.  “Lord Ren.  You have disappointed me greatly.”  Snoke does not look disappointed - his expression is worse still - amused.  “However, you have not completed your mission.  You are to remain on board the Finaliser.  You are to oversee the First Order’s efforts to counter-strike the Resistance, and you are to support the General in his efforts, as my proxy.  Keep me informed of any among the ranks that might prove an obstacle to our goals.  The First Order must not be allowed to make the mistakes of the Empire.”

Kylo’s head is spinning.  General?  Another General?  Or the General whose death Kylo had relived in sleep?  What-

“And meditate, boy.  You still have much to learn.”  The words sink like lead into Kylo’s mind, crushing the boy with their weight.  Kylo is barely keeping himself upright.

“Master-?”

“I will send further instruction.  Go now, Lord Ren.  Recover from your wounds.  I will not be so forgiving next time.  Go.”  Snoke’s words are absolute.

Kylo has no choice but to replace his cowl, and leave.

*

Outside the audience chamber, Kylo’s hand comes to rest against the transparisteel windows.

Heedless of his surroundings Kylo pulls himself into meditation, falling to his knees with a dull metallic thud.  If what the Supreme Leader said is to be believed… Kylo confronts the overwhelming noise of the ship.  He rips through the minds, most of them mundane, some of them ambitious, still more disturbingly violent - all of them weak.  They break like water against the bow of Kylo’s desperate intent.

But then, the current changes, curves, around a circular void - a whirlpool devoid of emotion or thought.  The overwhelming life of the Finaliser falls silent, and Kylo takes a final breath, before he falls into the abyss.

And when he breathes again he is in motion.  Kylo sweeps personnel aside as he follows that absence, stretching his Force sensitivity as far as it will go.  He grasps onto that eerie calm with the greedy fingers of his mind and pulls himself towards its epicentre, and Hux.

He traverses the ship in great strides, down the starboard side, and then inwards, away from the  officers’ quarters and the docking bays, towards the scent of blood and bacta.  

Soon, dead men begin to walk the halls.  Stormtroopers limp past, black droids chittering at their heels and wielding syringes.  The steady trickle of bacta tanks being filled and the groans of the wounded work in counterpoint to one another.  The corridors swim before Kylo’s eyes.  

The medical bay is the only part of the ship where troopers are allowed to remove their helmets in public.  Kylo grabs a soldier the same height as the General, another with the same pale skin, a third with red hair (not red enough).  He pushes the offending bodies away.

The droids are chittering at him, distantly.  One attempts to block his path, brandishing a loaded syringe.  Kylo’s control snaps completely and he unleashes his saber in a single vicious strike that bifurcates the droid’s black carapace.  

His vision is blurred, his chest is heaving, and the dead men around him are limping for cover.  He turns, intending to exact vengeance on another of the pitiful droids.

Ren.

Snoke’s voice makes Kylo drops to his knees, pain radiating through his body.  He becomes aware at last of the spectacle he is making.  Snoke is in his head, and his disgust is ripping holes in Kylo’s mind.

Enough.

Exhaustion hits the knight like a physical weight, pressing down on his spine.  Painfully, he staggers to his feet, and makes his way back to his quarters.  As Snoke recedes, slowly, from his thoughts, another feeling takes hold, one of absolute relief.

He is still alive, Kylo tells himself, as he pulls off his mask and sinks to the floor by the bed.   He is in medical - healing.  Hux is alive.  Meditate.  Follow the will of the Supreme Leader.

Kylo hopes that he will be able to let go of his confusion over the General as he releases himself to the Force.

When he comes out of meditation the next morning, he will find that he has not.

 

 

—H—

 

 

The week after Bakura goes by excruciatingly slowly.  Confined to the laboratory, and then to his quarters, Hux signs documents, does research and forms strategies; he tries, and fails, to uncover as much about Kylo Ren’s history, and his powers as he can.  

The General still feels a sick stab through his patched-up stomach when he thinks of the medical droid that Ren maimed shortly after arriving on board.  He knows that Phasma feels something for her troopers, though affection would be far too strong a word to describe it.  In a similar way, Hux has a slight affinity for the Finaliser’s machinery - from the hyperdrive to the messenger droids.

Mostly, Hux works hard to avoid any mention of the knight, but Phasma’s daily reports are never complete without word of the skulking black figure that has taken to haunting the ship's med bay.  Humans recover infuriatingly slowly, Hux feels with every moment that he is forced to hide in his quarters.

“Sir?”

Hux’s daydreams of dressing down Ren in front of the bridge crew are cut short by the door chime.  His security com identifies Lieutenant Mitaka waiting to enter.

Swiftly, he unplugs the wire which has been recharging him from the socket at the base of his skull.

“Enter.”

Mitaka is saluting when the door opens for him.  He steps into the room, glancing over his shoulder as he does.  Hux notices the movement with a frown.  “Is there a problem, Lieutenant?”

“No sir. No problem.  Captain Phasma ordered me to report : we are now twenty standard hours from planet U5346.”

Hux nods distractedly.

When Mitaka makes no attempt to leave the General glances back up at him.  “Will that be all, Lieutenant?”

“Sir…  The Captain informed us that Re// that Lord Ren is to command the Finaliser, as your equal.  Surely the Supreme Leader cannot mean to//”

“I did not realise,” Hux cuts him off sharply, “that you that you thought it appropriate to question the Supreme Leader’s will.”

“Never sir.  Only…”

“Speak plainly, Lieutenant.”

“Sir.  Ren has been… asking me questions.”

“Questions?  About the Order?  About the Finaliser?”

“No, sir… Personal questions.  About you.”

“Personal questions?”  Hux feels a deep, abiding sense of dread.  Could Ren have uncovered his condition already?

Mitaka peers at his superior worriedly.  “Nothing classified sir : family history, education, military background and so on.  I wouldn’t have answered but he was choking me.  Without touching me, sir.”  Sweat drips from Mitaka’s flustered face.

“That will be all, Lieutenant.  I will be resuming my duties from Alpha shift.  I will see to Ren personally then.”  Hux hurries Mitaka out of his rooms, his thoughts turning towards his own history.  As the door closes behind the boy, Hux curses Ren and the ghosts his presence unsettles.  

He has no time to put them to rest : if he should fail the Supreme Leader again, he will be of no further use.

The General has just turned away from the door when his enhanced hearing picks up a deep, reverberating hum from outside his quarters.

He strides back to the door as his mind catches up with his legs : it is the crackle of a lightsaber.

“Ren.  Release him.”

Kylo Ren turns sharply from where he has Mitaka pinned magically against one wall of the hallway, feet dangling.  Both of the knight’s hands are levelling his saber at the young officer’s throat.  He stares Hux down silently.

“Now, Ren.”

After seven excruciating seconds, Ren steps back, releasing Mitaka.  

The young man sprawls to the floor, choking and clutching at his throat.  Still, Hux is impressed as the officer tries to unholster his pistol despite his distress.

“What the _kriff_ do you think you’re doing _boy_?”  

Abruptly, the knight straightens, powers down his saber, and advances towards Hux.

“Sir-”  Mitaka croaks, trying to make it to his feet, gasping.

“Report to medical Mitaka.  Now.”  Mitaka gasps in pain and protest.

Ren passes Hux and enters his quarters.  

The General steels himself for a fight and follows him, sealing the doors behind him.

 

 

—K—

 

 

When the doors shut with a _snick_ behind them, a kind of giddiness takes hold of Kylo.  He turns and watches Hux move past him, warily, heading across the room to the bed.  There is little to see in the General’s quarters but bare walls and utilitarian furnishings.  Kylo’s eyes are trained on Hux.

“So glad to see you on two feet again, General.”  The knight’s voice is not his own - this voice is dry, deliberate, brimming with false calm.  “You seem… remarkably restored.  I was sure you would not survive your injuries.  Your arm alone…”

Hux’s spine straightens and he grimaces.  “You must think me fragile Ren.  Many before you have made that mistake.  Had you not been so panicked by your first taste of battle, you would have seen that that my state was not so critical as you supposed.”  Hux’s right arm moves as he speaks, tugging down the sleeve of his left where it hangs in a sling, straightening his collar.  His eyes, grey in the half-light, flicker to the knight and away again. 

Kylo feels a shiver of anger run through his limbs.  “I remember every minute from the hanger bay to the forest clearing, General.  I remember your death.”

Hux grimaces at the shake in Kylo’s voice.  “Clearly you were distracted Ren, a green solider overwhelmed by your first taste of conflict.  You will find the officers of the First Order to be tougher than you suppose”

“With Commander Kessen as the exception?  How did you make your miraculous escape while he perished in the flames?”

Hux grits his teeth.  “Our medical droids are capable of working miracles.  When they are not sliced in half-”

Suddenly Kylo moves.  Hux is caught off guard, turning to face him, and Kylo gets a strong grip on the front of his General’s uniform.  Hux’s fingers clamp around the knight’s wrist but he is pushed backwards by Kylo’s weight.  The knight’s fingers pull the General’s dress shirt out of his trousers, exposing his pale stomach.  Hux falls back onto the bed as Kylo’s fingers ghost over the shiny alloy of the patch over his abdomen.  The other gloved hand wraps around Hux’s throat.  “You died in my arms.”  Kylo spits, feeling phlegm on his lips beneath the cowl.

A black First Order boot connects with Ren’s middle and sends him stumbling backwards.  Kylo huffs in pain behind the mask, surprised at the General’s strength.  Hux splutters and backs into the bedside table, smashing a lamp.  

“Get.  Out.”  The General seems almost too angry to speak.

Kylo does not move.  Hux pulls himself upright and stares the knight down.  There is disgust in every line of his face.

The quiet hiss of the door opening cuts through the tension.  Kylo whirls to find two os Snoke’s creatures, almost as small as children, march into the room.

“A word of caution, Ren.”  Hux’s words are shards of glass.  “Complete the mission the Supreme Leader has set you, and stay away from my command.  Go.  Now, Ren.”

The anger rushes from Kylo, leaving confusion and relief in its wake.  His chest heaves and his eyes water.  His last words before he sweeps from the room are: “you should rest, General.  This conversation isn’t over.”

*

Outside, in the corridor, with the Engineers standing between him and the General’s quarters, Kylo rests a hand on one wall in abject relief.  He wants to laugh.  The sensation is foreign to him, after so long.  

Needless to say, the General is holding his interest.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I keep forgetting to post this and I have no idea how to post pictures, but a while ago the wonderful humzbird sent me a link that made my week! I'll work out how to integrate the picture eventually, but for now I'll just post the link:
> 
> (http://humzbird.tumblr.com/post/147739031617/guys-go-to-ao3-and-read-the-beautifully-written) 
> 
> Of course because I've split up my chapters to make them more readable this image now makes very little sense... Rest assured we will visit creepy laboratories soon...


	5. Act II.I Snoke's Executioner

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There's no escape for Hux.

 

 

—H—

 

 

Hux does not feel apprehension, until he enters the audience chamber and Snoke’s shadows smother him.

There is a row of four black-clad figures standing before the dais.  This far away, Hux cannot pick out Ren, but his voice is whispering penitence, making the shadows shiver.

Snoke looks up at his entrance and beckons him forward.  His face is stone.  Hux hesitates in the darkness for a moment, then does as he is ordered.  As Hux draws close enough to make out Ren’s words, Snoke raises a hand : and the deep, painful murmur fades into the folds of Ren’s robes.

“Enough, my apprentice.”

The row of figures turns to the General.  Their cowls gape down at him, with a glitter a silver like the edge of a steel knife framing their masks.  Hux glances at them in contempt and steps forward to greet his master.

“Supreme Leader,”  Hux salutes sharply, meeting Snoke’s deep-set eyes.

“General Hux.  You seem fully recovered.  How have the First Order’s commanders reacted to… recent events?”

Hux’s lip curls in a sneer that is entirely natural.  “The events of Bakura,” an appellation physically painful to utter, “were unfortunate, sire.  There are those among the ranks who plan to usurp me.”

“And so we are no close to our goal.”  Snoke’s anger makes the shadows swarm and choke.  Hux takes a moment to activate his voice.

“I will achieve a victory for the First Order in your name.  We will continue to advance as you plan, Supreme Leader.”

“I have faith in your methods, as always General.”  Though Snoke’s words are benign, his tone is threatening.

“Kylo Ren,”  Hux feels a weight lift from him when his master turns to one of the dark figures behind him.

Hux senses one of them step forward, kneel, and remove its cowl.  He keeps his head raises to the Supreme Leader.  It feels wrong to see Ren’s face again now, in front of his master.  Unbidden, an image rises in his mind : of messy black curls, bowed in submission.  It makes the shadows quiver around him.

“Tell me, Lord Ren : who is it you serve?”

“You alone, master.”

“And whose whims do you seek to fulfil?”

“Yours alone, master.”

“And yet, you disobeyed me.”  The words bring every nerve alive in shock.  The figures behind Hux draw painful breath.  The General cannot help but glance down, to see the way Kylo’s shoulders tighten in sudden horror. A flash of black curls passes across his vision.  How does Snoke know that Kylo sought him out against his orders?  What else might he know//

Snoke lets the accusation hang in the air.  Then, he relaxes back into his throne-like holo-chair.

“And you are forgiven.  This time.”  Kylo’s falls almost to all fours in relief and gratitude.  “Now leave us, all of you.  I have more to discuss with the General.”

Kylo stands smoothly and replaces his cowl, moulding back into the menacing knights who make their way out of the audience chamber.

The door shuts with a booming echo and the shadows settle once more.  Hux gathers his courage.

“Supreme Leader, I take responsibility for the loss of Bakura.  However, Colonel//”

“Silence, General.”  Snoke’s disapproval is an awful parody of his father’s.  “The events of Bakura were unfortunate, but we must turn our attention to the Conference.  It is imperative that we route out and exterminate any opposition.  You are prepared?”

“Yes sir.”

“And your right hand, the Captain?”

“For any eventuality, Supreme Leader.”

Snoke nods.  “You must learn to tolerate my apprentice, General Hux.  Lord Ren’s temper may be… explosive, but his presence is essential to set these plans in motion.  The other knights will also remain with the fleet for now, to ensure the events of Bakura are not repeated.”  Snoke’s words drip with a father’s content.  “I never lose, General.  See that you do not do so, either.”

Hux salutes again.

“And General…”

“Yes sir?”

“Needless to say, success is imperative.  Every asset is replaceable : especially a soldier.”

 _Especially a droid_.  Hux cannot help but think, sickened.  He salutes once more.

—Going Backwards—

{{ sergeant hux }}

A man is nothing if he does not have something to prove.  The Commandant used to tell his son that : in disgust, with a swift boot to the stomach.  A man’s legacy is everything he is worth.

The First Order had thirteen founders, including the Commandant.  Every one was a personal friend, loyal to the end.  Or so he had thought.

Only three men sat at the opposite end of the conference table.

They were the two officers who the Commandant truly trusted to the end, flanking the man himself : officers who knew about his obsession with resurrection his son, about Snoke’s attempts to take over the Order, about the ghosts that haunted the Commandant’s nights.

When Hux had entered the room, they had been in the midst of a gruff argument.  He had silenced it with his presence.  The Commandant had gone very pale.  Hux remembers how he had shaken in the silence, seated at the head of the oval synisteel table, staring wide-eyed at the young man with the red hair standing across from him.

They had been expecting Snoke to come through the door, made flesh at last, and they had been planning to turn their pistols on him.

“Who are you?”  The man on the Commandant7s left, General Boren, had asked.  Hux hadn’t responded.

Instead, he had reached into the pocket of his First Order uniform and pulled out a portable holo-projector.  He had laid it on the table and activated it.  After a moment of static, Snoke’s image had coalesced above the device.

He had been smiling, amused by the distrust he had sewn between the founders of the First Order.  Six of the twelve had already pledged themselves to the Supreme Leader, Iyat among them.  Three more only needed a little more convincing of the new order of things.  The final, pitiful resistance came from these three men.

Snoke had no intention of negotiation.  Neither did Hux.

“Snoke,” Boren demanded, “who is this?”

Snoke’s smile had been cruel.  “This - General, Admiral, Commandant - is Sergeant Hux, of the First Order’s new flagship.  He will be acting as my proxy in these… discussions.”

The Commandant had choked at the words, incapable of speech.

“You won’t face us yourself Snoke?”  On Hux senior’s right, Admiral Set had purpled with rage.  “After attempting a coup?  You would send a ghost to haunt us?”

“No.”  Snoke whispered, amused.  “I have made no _attempts_ to take control of the First Order : I have succeeded.  I have made no _attempts_ to send you a ghost.  _My_ order will be feared throughout the Galaxy,”  Snoke cocks his head with a gruesome smile, “and the Sergeant here will help me in that endeavour.”

“You stole him from me.”  The Commandant’s words were barely audible.  Hux’s face had stayed perfectly neutral, staring into the lined eyes.  Inside, a sick sense of fury, controlled but gathering speed and force, slashed at his stomach.  “Why?”  The Commandant asked raggedly.  Hux’s fury had been building from a swell into a tidal wave, rising towards his brain, drawing deeper and deeper, from the part of him that still belonged to an abandoned by, and an absent father.

“I do not dole out destruction, Commandant.  Nor do I smite those who defy me.”  Snoke had looked down on Hux senior from the holo-projection, with Hux junior at his right hand.  “This is my power : a demonstration of it.”  Snoke had leaned forward.  “You think you can defeat me.  But you are wrong.  I am a projection, Commander : an insidious thought, a doubt, that has burrowed into the minds of your most loyal officers and turned them against you.  The doubt that you could ever lead them to victory.”

The Commandant had swallowed.  He had turned to his son.  Hux remembers the silence and the noise with perfect clarity, as the grey-haired man found his voice, weak and gruff with emotion.  “Armitage.”  He had said : he had begged.  Each promise had proceeded the next in a flood, pooling at his feet.  To his son.  To his family.  To his legacy.

On either side of the Commandant, General and Admiral had reached for their weapons, sensing the tidal wave looming above them.

Snoke had smiled.  “Sergeant.  It is time for you to graduate.”

Hux had stepped forward.  He had raised his hand.  Grasped in that hand had been an officer’s pistol.

He had shot Admiral Sek in the forehead.

{{ captain hux }}

He had shot General Boren in the neck as he fumbled for his pistol.

{{ colonel hux }}

He had turned to the Commandant and holstered his weapon.  Hux senior hadn’t moved.  His pistol still hung at his waist.  He had watched his son advance from the head of the table.

When Hux was within touching distance, the Commandant had broken down.  He had begged again, for his son to speak, to show him that he was truly resurrected, more than a machine wearing his boy’s face, more than one of Snoke’s tricks.  He had curse Snoke and Armitage and the android before him and tears had pooled in his eyes.  His hands had shaken when they had gripped Hux’s shoulders, where white and black bands proclaimed his rank.

Hux had wrapped his hands around the sobbing man’s throat as his mouth ran away from him, offering his son a place at his side, begging him to speak, tell him that he had cried, he had cried his son, for Armitage Brendol Hu//

Hux had cut of his air until :

{{ general hux }}

—Going Forwards—

 

 

—P—

 

 

Captain Phasma does not tire easily.  She has fewer hours off-rotation than any other captain of the First Order.  Still, she prefers open warfare to the politics of the First Order.  With a gun in her hand, she has always found she is infinitely more successful.

The Captain lost many men on Bakura.  The death count does not troubler her, beyond the obvious shortage of assets.  She does not mourn the faceless stormtroopers, and she steers clear of medical.  She does not send holos to the families of the fallen troopers : families who had their children ripped from them as part of the Order’s ‘recruitment’ programme.

Nor does she particularly hate the New Republic, or particularly respect the Supreme Leader.  She dearly wishes she had a gun to hand now.

Because Lord Ren is haunting her footsteps.  Again.

The Captain keeps her temper, and loses the irritating shadow behind several blind corners before she enters medical and enters a restricted door guarded by two helmeted engineers.

The android laboratory unsettles Phasma.  In contrast to the well-lit, orderly bridge, it is shadowy and cavernous, as though Snoke’s presence hovers over the room.

Phasma’s General is standing with his back to her when she enters.  She knows he finds solace here : the electronics and the engineers and the rows of frozen, cloned bodies don’t disconcert him.

The Captain removes her mask and marches to his side, trying not to look too closely at the cadavers.  “Sir?”

Hux’s gaze is distant and dark.  He walks further into the room, past rows of metal gurneys.  On each one is an inanimate body, their face identical to the one beside it : and to Hux.

He comes to a stop beside a gurney, attended by an engineer.  The creature is in the process of peeling back a clone’s skin.  Ever nanometer reveals not blood and sinew, but polymer and wiring, beneath.  Phasma keeps her eyes on the General’s furrowed brow.

“Replaceable,” Hux murmurs, almost inaudibly.

“Sir?”

He looks up sharply and, in a normal register : “Everything is prepared for the Conference?”

Phasma snaps back to attention.  “It will begin at theta shift, sir.”

“I will be with you shortly.”

“I recommend you wear the sling, sir.  To keep up appearances.  They will all be expected injuries//“

“That will be all, Captain.”

Phasma considers arguing.  There are the knights to police, and the morale of the crew to consider : there is the imminent arrival of the commanders, among them men and women that would have celebrated to hear that Hux had failed to make it off Bakura.

The engineer meets an eye socket, and picks up a different instrument.

The Captain salutes and beats a hasty retreat without another word.

 

 

—K—

 

 

The recycled air of the Finaliser seethes with the outrage of thirteen commanders, each one considering themselves the worthy leader of the First Order.

At one end of the conference room Kylo observes them.  Hux is seated at the head of the table, opposite him, with Phasma standing at his right hand.  Between them, all is pandaemonium.  Kylo is beginning to understand why Snoke sent him.

“Enough,” The polished synisteel clangs dully when Hux stands and pounds it, quieting the din.  Kylo winces at the way it draws attention to his sling.

The officers retreat to their seats, smoothing their uniforms.  Only two remain on their feet - General Tarkin, her face scarred, her expression unreadable, and Admiral Iyat, a grey-haired Star Destroyer of a man whose broad shoulders make Hux seem frail in his padded coat.

The General squares his shoulders.  “If the Resistance are allowed to establish supply routes into the Unknown Regions, it will put all of our operations in the system in peril.  We must-”

“It seems to me General Hux, that all these grand strategies are just attempts to cover up the _debacle_ that was the defence of Bakura.”  Tarkin’s words may be for Hux, but her attention is on the Admiral opposite her.  She seeks his approval, Kylo notes with distaste.  “Your involvement on Bakura was circumspect from the first.  Why should we commit troops to another costly offensive to help repair your ego, General?”

“It is Colonel Kessen who should answer for the deplorable state of Bakura base, General Tarkin.  I ceded command by order of the Supreme Leader,” - twelve minds light up with fear, or anger, or distrust “-but there was not time to correct his mistakes.  Fortunately, the Resistance saved us the trouble of disciplining Kessen ourselves for his incompetence.”

There is a murmur of outrage around the table.

“Quite convenient, to pin one’s failures on a dead man.”

All eyes turn to Admiral Iyat.  The First Order’s military council shuffle uncomfortably in their chairs.  General Tarkin takes her seat in deference to him, though their rank is equal.  Kylo stands up straighter - Iyat’s contempt is a bitter taste behind his teeth.

Hux opens his mouth to speak but the Admiral’s voice booms out through the conference room regardless.

“Every officer in this room is aware of the damage Bakrua has done.”

Kylo catches Hux rubbing at the joint of his left arm unconsciously.  Can he feel the burn of the blaster shot through his side, or the ache of his crushed limb, every time someone utters ‘Bakura’ - Kylo wonders.  “Rather than rushing into a half-cocked offensive to try and save face, _Hux_ , I believe we should strengthen our existing bases and focus on the future of the First Order.  After all, this is hardly the string of victories we were promised.”

“The Resistance will not even need to crack our encryption codes if they can simply starve us out.  We must control the Shiritoku Spur.  We-”

“So you claim, Hux.”  There, again - Iyat has not once called the General by his title.  Kylo’s hand twitches in irritation.  “Is the Supreme Leader concerned for our supply of sun petals from Timora?”

A murmur of shocked not-quite laughter rustles through the room and Kylo's steps forward, enraged.

“Does Snoke-“

“The Supreme Leader has decided that General Hux will lead the charge.  To question the General in this matter is to invite the _wrath_ of-”

“Ren.”  The synisteel clangs.  Hux looks Kylo dead in the eyes, as angry as the knight has every seen him.

Tarkin speaks up viciously.  “What stake does this creature have in the conference?”  She turns her glare from Kylo to Hux.  “Your lackeys won’t win you any favours here, General.”

“Lord Ren,” Hux bites contemptuously, “is the Supreme Leader’s proxy in these discussions, General Tarkin.  For now.  And the Supreme Leader’s orders are the only ones I follow.  The First Order is coming to a critical stage that will decide its future, and I do not intend to fail him.”

 _Again_ echoes through Kylo’s head, a silent word amplified by twelve other minds around the conference table.  No doubt it is knocking about in Hux’s mind also.

The Admiral scoffs loudly.  “And what ‘critical stage’ is that, Hux?”  Iyat forgets his place.  Kylo itches to remind him of it.

“I have my role and you have yours, Admiral.  If you do not have access to information, then it is because you cannot be trusted with it.  We will break for now.  If any of you have personal grievances you wish to lay before me, you will take them up with Captain Phasma.”  Hux waves his hand dismissively.  Officers around the table mutter in protest.

The General stands and strides towards the door with Captain Phasma at his side.

Kylo moves as Iyat moves, around the table, towards Hux, arm outrestched.

“You _dare_ speak to me like that _boy_?”  Iyat grasps Hux’s shoulder, the one contained in the sling, and wrenches it towards him.  “Your father-”

The hum of a light saber cuts him off.

The room is silent.  Every officer is frozen, their hands moving towards their service pistols.  The smell of burning wafts towards them as the saber singes Iyat’s collar, nanometers from drawing blood.

Kylo savours the taste of fear emanating from the Admiral’s mind.  His limbs jerk with bloodlust - just a taste, just a nick.  Iyat wheezes through his throat, afraid to breathe least it move his throat closer.

“Ren.  Remove your saber from the Admiral’s neck.  Now.”

There is no pain in Hux’s eyes - only terrible anger.  The sight makes Kylo’s breath quicken.

He should be angry, he supposes dimly, that Hux should order him to do anything.  But his heart is pounding in his ears and his gaze is locked with Hux’s.

Kylo steps back.

“Admiral Iyat, I would speak to you alone.  Ren, get out of my sight and make sure those _shades_ of yours aren’t damaging my ship.  We will reconvene the conference at alpha shift.”

Hux turns on his heel and leaves, with Phasma and the Admiral following him.

Ren does not try to tail them.  After a moment he sheathes his saber.  The officers trickle out, hugging the walls as they pass him.

Finally alone, Kylo lets his head sink forward.


	6. Act II.II Training Grounds

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hux might be an android, but he is far from emotionless.

 

 

—H—

 

 

“Captain, report to the bridge.”

Hux’s shoulders shake slightly as Phasma leaves him alone with the Admiral : whether it is from his confrontation with Ren or the fight ahead of him, he could not say.  He looks out of the debriefing room’s wide viewport and tries to calm his frayed circuits.

At the other end of the viewport stands the hulking, grey-haired commander, tugging at his singed collar.  As much as Hux is repulsed by the knight’s inability to control his own temper, he is gratified to see Iyat sweat.

“Admiral.”  Iyat barely spares Hux a glance.  His eyes are on the stars, and the grey, unnamed gas giant they are orbiting.

“It seems you have difficulty controlling your crew, Hux.”

Hux knows that he must learn to subdue men like this, if he is to fulfil his creator’s wishes.  He keeps his own eyes on the stars.

“We must retaliate.  There is no question of retreat.  Bakura’s location is crucial to our operations in the Unknown Regions : operations that you are not privy to, Admiral.  It represents an embarrassing loss for the First Order,” admitting it to this man hurts Hux physically, “which we cannot allow to go unpunished.  It is imperative that we take action.”

The Admiral smirks, pulling the scars on his right cheek gruesomely upwards.  His reflection in the viewport stretches ominously.  “Yes.”

“Yet you continue to challenge my authority.  You//“

“Let us drop this pretence, Armitage, shall we?”

Hux’s diatribe sticks in his throat.  His eyes meet Iyat’s in the reflection in shock.  The Admiral has just gone from mockery to mutiny, and he knows it.  Iyat’s smile widens unpleasantly.

“You will never call me that again, if you wish to continue breathing, Admiral Iyat.”  Hux’s voice is almost too quiet to hear.

“What can you possibly hope to offer me for my allegiance boy?  I have influence to match yours, and unlike your _Supreme Leader_ , my allies are more than shadowed voices.  The younger officers you can subdue with fear : but I know your past boy.  I know what you are.”

Hux’s jaw locks.  He turns to Iyat fully, his shoulders tense.  “What I am?”

“A fanatic.”  Iyat spits, and the relief if electric down Hux’s spine.  Iyat always had his theories : rumours about the identity of the Supreme Leader, about Hux’s disappearance as a child, about Hux Senior’s death.  He has stepped closer to the General.  “A deranged believer in the _Force_ , the puppet-master’s favourite puppet, little better than a rebel.  And Snoke?  He is//“

“Admiral,” Hux hisses, “you will shut your mouth before you say something that will force my hand.”

He is close to Iyat now : within spitting distance.  Iyat’s face is rage and arrogance; Hux’s is cold fury.

“Are you threatening to strangle me Armitage?”  Hux’s hand comes dangerously close to his blaster.

“You will not call me that again, Admiral.  I am a General of the First Order.”

Iyat laughs, full-bodied, spittle flying from his lips.

“You are Snoke’s executioner, _General_ , nothing more.  Tell me : who promoted you to this rank, or to any rank?  You//“

“Take your pick.”  Hux spits back with a smile of his own.  He is nose-to-nose with Iyat as he whispers : “Chose an officer : anyone would do.  You would promote me yourself, Admiral, if the Supreme Leader ordered it of you.  Do not forget that you were among the first to pledge yourself to him.  Perhaps you need a demonstration of his power?”

Iyat is not cowed, but some of the power has left his frame.  “He has given you an order, Admiral.  Will _you_ obey?  Or will you be _replaced_ , like those that have gone before you?”  Hux steps back.  “Our next meeting is schedule for alpha shift.  I suggest you think on your allegiances.”  He turns back to the viewport.

Hux keeps his gaze staring out into Space until the Admiral retreats, cursing.  He rubs his shoulder absently, his eyes on the stars.

*

Hux cannot say how long he watches the stars.

Captain Phasma has the bridge, Ren and his lackeys are terrorising some corner of his ship, and there are hostile commanders roaming his ship.  Hux wants to return to his quarters.

The stars are familiar.  They memorised star-maps at the academy, but Hux has an internal map, hardwired into him.  He looks out into the Galaxy, past the pale gas giant, towards the dim stars of the Savareen sector with their icy planets, and further, imagining he can spot blue Bakura and green Endor mocking him from the glittering Shiritoku Spur.  Those planets were once places of rebellion, and now they give the Resistance power again.

After a time, Hux realises that it is not the stars he is looking at, but the reflection of his eyes in the window.

These eyes are also familiar.  They may be paler, more suspicious, and moulded from siliplast, but they are Armitage’s eyes.

Hux breaks his stare forcefully and turns, setting a swift pace towards the Finaliser’s stern and his living quarters.

The corridors are abuzz with a constant exchange of officers shuttling to and fro amongst the fleet : fresh troops being exchanged for the injured; officers schmoozing their betters; and unsanctioned liaisons being conducted in the barracks.

Hux focusses on the sensation of his ship expanding and contracting : personnel marching down her corridors like platelets through the blood vessels of a beast fighting for breath, healing, preparing for battle once more.

His hand moves to his left side protectively.

The Finaliser is not a ship built to house an army, unlike those commanded by the likes of Tarkin or Iyat.  She does not have conditioning equipment, or mass-training facilities, or spectacle sports.  She is not accustomed to being so full of life.

The corridor becomes more and more crowded, until Hux is forced to halt.  A woman in an orange hazmat jacket in front of him turns and her eyes land on the white bands of his coat, then move to his fiery hair.  She hastily steps aside, pushing a helmet-less trooper backwards (an appalling breach of protocol, Hux notes dimly).

Gradually, others look towards the commotion, and Hux finds himself funnelled towards the front of the spectators as his crew scramble out of his way.

Feeling detached and slightly forbidding, Hux moves towards the crowd’s epicentre as it parts hurriedly around him.

The training hall is below them.  The gantry that overlooks it is usually deserted but for the officer on duty.  Today bodies are pushed against the railings, staring down at the combatants fighting below.  They are not troopers, Hux realises : they are clad in black.

The noise of the crowd dips in the General’s presence, then sours when one of the dark figures ducks a vicious jab from a crackling saber.  The voices rise and fall like music, gasps and barks that narrate the action bellow.  Hux grips the railing with both hands and peers down.

Black robes swirl and pull apart, accompanied by the hum and crash of electricity.  The masks are black and silver, glinting underneath the stark lighting.  There, with his grooved silver brow, is Ren, ducking a lunge and retaliating in kind.

Ren’s grace takes Hux back to battle, momentarily, and he finds himself following Ren with his eyes as the knight dips and weaves and kicks, sending his opponent reeling back to a chorus of low gasps.

Ren disarms the other knight with a flick of his wrist.  Then he steps back and looks upwards, into Hux’s rapt gaze.

Unsettled, the General looks away, to the other side of the gantry.  His throat catches on glass : there, surrounded by crowds of officers, is Iyat.

Or perhaps Hux is hallucinating.  Surely Iyat stormed back to his ship, incensed : he would not have com here, to see the knights’ spectacle.  Except Hux is an android, incapable of hallucination.

Iyat is smiling.

—Going Backwards—

He is young : dressed in his scuffed, borrowed Academy uniform, his hair limp, his eyes swollen.  He has spent the night crying, after a meeting with the Commandant which ended with his father’s disappointment and a sound beating : and Armitage limping back to his bed, trying not to wake the fifty cadets around him with his mewling.

He had tried to cry quietly, tried to mouth out silently for his mother : the harsh, steel-tipped soldier who had stood between her gentle son and the Galaxy.  By morning word had spread.

He had wandered through his classes in a daze, jostled by disgusted classmates, barely able to open his red eyes.

When he had entered combat training, he had kept his back to the wall and rigidly straight.  This was the protocol in Iyat’s class.

But because of Armitage, the other cadets were equally as sleep deprived.  Hands, tired and cruel, big and small, pushed him to the front of the group.

Commander Iyat, scarred and hulking, entered the room, wielding a wooden sword and a smile.  Hux senior was the Commandant of the Imperial Academy first, and the assumed leader of the First Order second, and his comrades were charged with teaching the next generation.

Iyat was ill-suited to dealing with children, and adjusting to life after the Empire had made him crueller still.

Iyat taught because Hux commanded it.  He would do more than teach, on the Commandant’s orders.  That day, he had been asked for a favour he relished.

Stumbling out into the open, padded room, Armitage was sized-up and found wanting : he had cried all night, kicked by the feet of the boys around him as they pretended to move in their sleep, dozing in the morning out of sheer exhaustion.  He was thin limbed and sleep-deprived.  He had burned himself as he ironed his uniform that morning.

Iyat threw Armitage a wooden sword : small, a child’s weapon, designed for a boy half his size.  He fumbled, dropping the toy amidst laughter.

—Hux remembers this a knight brandishes their Force weapon in an elegant arch, forcing Ren to duck and roll—

“Some of you may think,” the instructor addresses his class, “that combat training is unnecessary for officers.”  Iyat brought his wooden sword in a lethal arch which landed on Armitage’s skinny ribs.  The cadet fell to his knees with a pained mewl.  “Get _up,_ boy.”  Iyat’s face was disgusted and terrifying.

Armitage staggered to his feet, his lungs spasming.  “You may ask what use combat training might be.”  The second strike landed on Soren’s neck, making him gag and stumble.  The tears began to fall.

—In the gantry, one hand gripping his patched-up side, the other white on the railing, Hux’s eyes are staring at Iyat’s smug grin—

Armitage tried to bring his sword up, tried to hold in the sobs.  The music of the crowd is not composed of restrained gasps, like the ones echoing in Hux’s ears.  It is made of startled young laughter : bright and cruel, and conducted by Iyat.

“You may even ask what use there could be for this demonstration at all.”  Iyat casually disarmed Hux, almost dislocating the boy’s arm with the strike.  His pupils cheered.

“But a soldier must be strong, no matter their function.  There is no room for weakness in our First Order.”  Iyat advanced towards Hux, who cowered backwards, his sword raised limply.

“What have you to say to that, boy? Have you been keeping my cadets up at night with your whimpering?  Would you call yourself weak, boy?  Would you?  No?

“You should.”  The man charged Hux suddenly.  Terrified, the boy shook uncontrollably and tried to cover his head with his thin arms.  Vicious blows landed on his sore limbs and Hux was powerless to stop them.

Then Iyat grasped his red hair between blunt fingers and lifted him out of his foetal position.  “How disappointing, _Armitage_ ,” —Hux shakes with the force of memory— “You haven’t been practising your drills.  Haven’t your peers been helping you improve?  No?”  Hux looked up into the unforgiving gaze and let his arms fall limp.

Etched into Hux’s mind, vivid and red, is Iyat’s toothy grin.  “Who would be so good as to help Armitage practice?”

Thirty small hands flew up.

Released, Hux-Armitage-General-Hux crumbled to the floor as though his strings were cut.

 

 

—K—

 

 

Kylo cannot place the panic choking off his breath, any more than he can say what propels him towards Hux’s quarters with such force.  His muscles burn after hours of sparring, and sweat cools on the back of his neck beneath the stifling mask, hair plastered to his face, after trying to channel his frustration into the slash of his saber.  The questions Hux refused to answer _slash_. His master’s disappointment _slash_. His undeniable power and his complete lack of control over the universe _kick, disarm, saber to the throat_.  The knights were much more satisfying opponents than service droids.

The same momentum carries him towards the officers’ quarters, a burning hunger to place the helpless look in the General’s eyes as he gazed down at Kylo from the gantry.  He had recognised that look - not Kylo, but Ben.  Ben had recognised that look.

Kylo rounds the corner as Hux slams his fist into his door controls, and barrels through the gap into his quarters.  The knight pushes his way into the room behind the General before they can close again with a shudder.

“General…” he begins gruffly, before he realises that he has no follow up.

For a moment, Hux is absolutely still.  Then, he turns to face Kylo silently, his eyes wide.

Standing there, the tallest object in Hux’s room, Kylo does not know what to do with his hands.  The General’s face is open when he turns around, shaking slightly, looking at Kylo in numb shock.

It should not be so easy for Kylo to reach up and push back his cowl, releasing the catch on his mask.  Perhaps it is Hux’s fragile expression that compels him to expose himself in kind.

“Was your discussion with the Admiral successful?”  The sound of Kylo’s voice, unmuffled, seems to jerk Hux out of his inward spiral.

“What do you want?”  Hux’s voice is hollow and his gaze slides numbly over Kylo.

“I wanted…” what exactly?

Hux’s tone turns suddenly, poisonously viscous.  “You wanted to test our master’s capacity for forgiveness, perhaps?”

Kylo fumbles with his mask and drops it in surprise when the General takes a violent step towards him, forcing him backwards.  “You would seek me out again, against his orders?  You would continue to pick at me, to peel away at the layers of my patient, to-“

“Yes.”  Kylo breathes, because there is truth in Hux’s words.  He wants more of this soft underbelly of a man, to peel away his defences, to peer underneath.  This fragile creature reminds him of Ben so vividly as to be torture - a burning sore of a person, painful to look at, but one that Kylo cannot help but examine, out of sadism perhaps.

Or maybe, a voice whispers, you do not want to pull apart the seams of this painful man.  Perhaps you want to soothe him, and his sores.

Hux seems to be only half-aware of what he is saying.

“You would pick me apart to find out how I work.  You would beat me, mock me, make me an object under your control-“

Kylo’s eyes widen.  “No.  No, I-”

“You would feed from my weakness, make it your strength, defame me in the eyes of the Supreme Leader - recycle me like so much faulty machinery-“

“No, Hux, stop.”  Kylo grips the General by his thin shoulders and wrenches his body forwards.  Finally, Hux’s voice quietens, and his eyes rise to meet Kylo’s.

The knight feels ill - that frantic curiosity that eats at his stomach when he is around Hux has returned - that fascination that Kylo cannot contain.

Kylo pulls their bodies together, turns them, until Hux’s back is against the wall, beside the closed door.  

“I would not throw you aside,” he mutters, unthinking, as his palms smooth over Hux’s collar, feeling the thin body beneath the stiff, broad shoulders of the uniform. “I would not…”

Hux grips his tunic, tighter and tighter, and as Kylo dips his head, the General’s fists guide him down.

One mouth touches the other, as if by accident, then applies tentative pressure.

Kylo’s fingers tear through Hux’s sling, and both of Hux’s hands untangle themselves and reach around to grip Kylo’s back.  Kylo lets his own fingers wander over the arch of Hux’s shoulders to take his neck in the circle of thumb and forefinger. 

Kylo pushes down to deepen the kiss, a torn-off sound escaping as his fingers meet the soft hair behind Hux’s ear.  

Hux’s skin is solid and strong; his mouth is cool and tightly shut, unyielding.  His limbs shake imperceptibly.  Or are those Kylo’s limbs, vibrating with energy?

The knight licks along the seam of Hux’s lips and he is sure he hears a response, a bright burst of static, from the back of the General’s throat. 

Kylo can feel the brush of Hux’s hair against his forehead, the softness of the locks in his fingers, the starch of the black collar, the smoothness of the skin of his throat, caressed by both hands. In his mind he imagines Hux’s red strands twining in his black curls.

Kylo fumbles, his brain starting to catch up, wondering why Hux isn’t responding.  He pulls back slightly.

Hux surges forward, almost angry at Kylo’s retreat, pulling the knight back against him and letting his hands roam.

His mouth opens on a groan.  Kylo takes advantage of it, feeling giddy against Hux’s cool, thin lines.

Kylo brings one hand down Hux’s neck, along the curve of his throat, towards his back, his fingertips dipping beneath Hux’s collar. They catch non something just in the hollow where neck meets shoulders.

Kylo’s fingers stop.  Gently, he mirrors his tongue with his finger-tips, tracing a hard, circular indent in the flesh of Hux’s-

Hux surges forward again, but this time his hands are made of steel, and with them he breaks from Kylo, pushing him back with overwhelming force.

Kylo blinks through a haze of arousal, uncomprehending in the face of the General’s heaving, spitting anger. When he reaches towards the General plaintively, Hux’s eyes go wide and he stumbles backwards.

The only sound in the room is of Kylo’s breathing, harsh and irregular.

Hux licks his lips and Kylo swallows hard, waiting several tense moments.

“Ren-“ the General’s hair is mussed, and he seems to have trouble forming words.  Kylo feels unsteady, standing in the middle of his quarters, equally dishevelled.  “You- are you mad?”

Slowly, shakily, Hux moves from around Kylo’s body, crouches to retrieve the discarded helmet.

“We- you- you knelt there beside me, in the shadow of His contempt.”  Hux’s face contorts in disgust at the mask.  At himself.  At Kylo.  “And yet still you came here.  Still you- Get _out_.”

Hux shoves the mask at Kylo, who receives it with numb fingers. The General’s rage makes him shake.  Hesitantly, he takes a step backwards, and Hux’s door slides open.

“Now Ren.”

“As you wish, General.”  Kylo mutters with numb lips, replacing the helmet.

He turns and exits Hux’s quarters.

Outside, the corridor is too bright, too cold, too much like reality.  Kylo tries to slow his breathing, closing his eyes, reaching into the Force-

Hux’s quarters open and the General rushes past him, his hair still ruffled, his collar still askew.  His lips still kissed.

Kylo blinks and he is on his hands and knees.


End file.
